… It’s not a reach to say that over the last 24 hours, the University of Alabama has suffered its worst black-eye since George Wallace stood in the school house door. From CNN to ESPN to NBC News with Brian Williams, Alabama and its reputation has been carpet bombed from one end of the country to the other.

It’s not a reflection on the school that Harvey Updike is borderline certifiable. As far as I know, he has no official or unofficial relationship with the university. Whatever tenuous linkage exists is completely in the mind of Al from Dadeville. So don’t blame the school. I’m not even sure you can blame the culture (although, admittedly, it’s tempting). Sometimes people behave like complete assholes simply because they’re complete assholes.

For an Auburn blog you’d think they’d be a little circumspect about Alabama’s various transgressions. This is the worst black eye since Wallace? Really? Worse than the Antonio Langham-induced forfeits of 1993? Worse than the Albert Means affair?

And while I totally agree that Paul Finebaum is a useless douche, I don’t see how you can lay this at his feet, even if his listenership is riddled with people who make Rollen “Rainbow Man” Stewart look like a schoolmarm. Bammers and Barners were doing horrendous things to each other long before Finebaum arrived on the scene, and I dare say Harvey Updyke would’ve poisoned those trees even if Finebaum had never existed — Updyke claimed his actions were in retaliation for Auburn fans celebrating the death of Bear Bryant, which would’ve happened several years before Finebaum made his first radio appearance. If you’re gonna lump Finebaum in with the factors that inspired Updyke’s actions, you also have to give him a little bit of the credit for Updyke being brought to justice — after all, if the guy hadn’t called in to the show to brag about it last month, who knows if he ever would’ve gotten caught?

Not so sure Doug. I have always felt these spree killers are motivated, at least partially, by the 15 minutes of fame they get from their actions. (I have never understood the national media giving these nuts’ names, showing pictures of them, or publishing their writings. Just call them all “loser in life”, why feed their need to be known?) In Alabama, the F’Bomb show is big time and I am certain he eagerly awaited other Bama fans to applaud his efforts.

Why doesn’t Sirius make F’Bomb act like a national show and limit callers to once per week, or longer, to break up the clique? We could use a good, national sports radio show devoted to CFB but Paul isn’t man enough for the task. That show, and the band of losers that call every day, should operate in restricted airspace limited to the Alabama area.

+1. The whole idea of the media making national figures out of nuts who commit crimes is, at least in part, a cause of the nut doing the crime in the first place. Multiple studies have shown that assassins and would-be assassins of famous people, for example, often are losers who do the act as a means of getting to be seen as “important” by other people. While he did not kill a person in this incident I see this tree killer as being cut from the same bolt of cloth mentally. He did it and secretly wanted to be caught for the notoriety it would bring. Some in the media understand this, too. That is why at sporting events like football and baseball games the TV people no longer show the transgressor who runs onto the field during a game. That takes away the motive. You may have noticed that those “running on the field” incidents have almost completely stopped since the networks adopted that policy.

I don’t know that summarily refusing to identify murderers is the solution to the problem — or if it’s even possible in a day and age where the majority of the people in the country have Internet access. But I absolutely grant you that Finebaum, for all his journalistic pretensions, is basically running the broadcast equivalent of a car wreck for listeners to slow down and gawk at; his show isn’t even as much about sports as it’s about “Everybody have a laugh at the expense of these goobers I’m surrounded by.” He could be using his national profile to be sports journalism’s Edward R. Murrow or Bill Moyers — instead he’s using it to be its Jerry Springer.

“That show, and the band of losers that call every day, should operate in restricted airspace limited to the Alabama area.”

You mean because nationally that position is already filled: “The Jim Rome Show”

What those two guys in particular provide for the sports world is little different than from what all those checkout magazines provide for the celebrity world. Granted, there is more access to the provider on the sports shows, but all those pics and comments on the random shots of ‘celebs on the streets’ and the catty comments that go with them aren’t much different.

But, three weeks from now no one in Iowa will remember who Finebaum is. If only that were true of Rome.

“It’s not a reach to say that over the last 24 hours, the University of Alabama has suffered its worst black-eye since George Wallace stood in the school house door.”

Yeah, Jay Coulter also blames Jodie Foster for Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan. After all, Hinckley had no real connection to her other than an unhealthy level of obsession. And, he chose to act on that obsession in a manner that Foster was not only not impressed by, but also would have tried to stop had she had the opportunity beforehand. Pretty much the same deal as the Alabama-Updyke relationship if you ask me. I don’t think any less of the University of Alabama or Alabama’s crazy fans, just because one crazy sidewalk fan went off the reservation.

There wasn’t. And that probably has to do with the fact that there wasn’t a great deal of damage done to the trees in that incident, thankfully. The idiot didn’t set the trees themselves on fire, he set some of the toilet paper on fire.

Well, setting the TP on fire would have been the best way to (eventually) ignite the trees them selves, given that they weren’t dead wood.

My point was that the jump from condemning the individual to condemning the University and all of its supporters wasn’t made at that time. Surely that can’t be solely because that attempt was ‘unsuccessful’. Personally, I think it has more to do with the difference in images that Georgia and Alabama have in the media/national conscience. That’s just something with which Alabamians will just have to live…and see it as it truely is: a mark of lack of sophistication on the part of those making the charge/stereotyping.

I haven’t found any conclusive evidence that a Georgia fan did set the TP on fire back in November. I mean, there were at least two instances before that where the trees had gotten set on fire, and in one of those cases it looked for all the world like a careless Auburn fan had gotten the conflagration started in the first place.

If this incident counts as a “black eye” for Alabama, what will Auburn fans call it when the Cam Newton/Trooper Taylor/Bobby Lowder shit hits the fan? If I were an Auburn fan right now, I’d be very careful with my righteous indignation.

Living here as an outsider in Alabama, you kind of begin to wish that folks here had as much passion about, say, their literacy rate, the obesity problem, or many other factors that keep them vying with Mississippi as “Worst Place in the Union.” Instead, though, they get their collective britches in a wad over some trees getting poisoned.

Given what we are watching on the news coming out of Wisconsin today (soon tho be followed by Michigan and Ohio), I don’t think Northerns have much room to talk. Their ignorance just takes another form.

Reading may be tough for Alabamians…but Yankees have zero grasp of math.

I double checked with my paystub and, yep, I contribute more of my pay to my retirement and healthcare than they are being asked to do…plus, in this case, were I living in Wisconsin I would be paying for their benefits as well!

But maybe the math that they teach in the College of Education won’t show all of those things as deductions from my gross pay! ;)

You know as well as I do that most of the commotion up there isn’t over the contribution, it’s over collective bargaining.

And while you’re doing the math, add up Wisconsin’s surplus before Walker decided to hand out tax cuts and deals to some of his constituents. It’s a made-up crisis. If he were a Democrat, people like you would be screaming Alinsky’s name at the top of your lungs.

I’m sure all of the waitresses, secretaries, and warehouse workers that were forced to take the day off of work to watch their children that should be in school will use this time to explore those subtleties of the legislation.

Nope, the commotion is a direct result of the elected Democrats abdication of their responsibility and leaving it for a mob to try and accomplish what they couldn’t.

Collective bargining is/should be a relic of the past. If the Demos want to live there then perhaps it will get through to them if we speak their language: It’s the economy, stupid!

Here’s what Walker is asking for:
-Collective bargaining to only be allowed for base pay.
-Union dues not to be collected by the state.
-Annual Secret ballots to keep unions certified.
-Union dies to become voluntary.

You better go back to talking about college football. You seem to have left your area of competence discussing the spoiled children in Wisconson.

Either we ALL are going to have to swallow some bitter pills- the HOPE changes are about to nail me, as well as massive cuts to the Agriculture budget which are going to devastate the Extension Service- or we ALL will SINK.

Unions are not the only cause of this mess but they are probably the greatest cause. In their genesis, unions were needed to make sure that powerless workers were not treated like de facto slaves; today, they are primarily Democratic party subsidiaries, taking the dues of their members, whatever their philosophies and beliefs may be, and supporting liberal elected officials. These officials, continuing the circle of life, take those dues, add a lot of taxpayer money to it, and return it to the unions.

Unions are for the most part obsolete, making labor more expensive than the free market dictates, and driving product costs skyward. As a result, American goods become less and less competitive globally.

Wisconsin is a great example- public education produces a piss-poor product but demands more and more compensation because they “try real hard”. Rand would have smelled THIS ONE from a mile away.

Big time stretch there Senator. Rand got her social security late in life. That’s not exactly being on the government dole. Social Security is a ponzi scheme and a crime and I’d opt out tomorrow if I could. But since I can’t I’ll take my.benefits if I get them. That doesn’t put me on the dole, it means I’m earning my shitty ROI for.paying in my whole life.

No, she was getting what she was supposedly owed for what she paid into. It’s one thing to think Social Security should not exist, it’s another to forfeit your benefits for the sake if proving a point. I’d venture to wager that Ms. Rand earned a negative return on her social security investment.

Then good. The one thing in common that all these near bankrupt states share is an over-pensioned, over-benefitted, over paid, closed shop, forced political use of dues, non-incentivized public work force. We’re not talking about miners slaving away to pay their debt at the company store.
Fla: any website called Crooks and Liars has credibility problems.

Before you conclude that the Wisconsin governor created a crisis to bust unions, do a little examination of the details of his tax cuts, the state tax burden in Wisconsin relative to other states, and maybe the relationship of tax collections to recent economic activity in Wisconsin. My point: I have no idea, but you’re a little quick on the draw to blame an ideological opponent.
Second: regardless whether Wisconsin was going to run a surplus, eliminating collective bargaining for public employees, especially in a closed shop state, is a step in the right direction.

I’m not opposed to what he’s doing ideologically. There are plenty of places I can point to, like California, where the public employee unions deserve a huge amount of blame for abusing the system.

Any way you want to look at it, though, Walker deliberately wiped out a budget surplus at a time when finances are shaky. That’s not prudent management in my book. And union breaking such as you approve of has nothing to do with restoring fiscal sanity. Especially when the governor picks and chooses which unions to break.

Teachers pay dues from Taxpayer money out of salary provided by Taxpayer’s for a Public Union

Public Union uses those dues paid for by Teachers with Taxpayer money, to pay for lobbying the State, Striking and Civil disobedience measures to ensure more Taxpayer money is paid our to their Union members (or at least don’t get cut).

The taxpayers are also paying the Governors salary, Legislative salary. Everyone has the tit of the Taxpayer.

So in the end, it is the Taxpayers that work in the private sector that are continually getting shafted and we are damn sick of it.

I can’t speak for the teachers, but what I find objectionable is that Walker is trying to cloak an attack on political opponents with something more noble when (1) he created the immediate financial crisis the state faces; (2) much of what he proposes will have a very small impact on savings; (3) the regime isn’t being applied across the board to all public sector unions, but only the ones which didn’t give him political support; and (4) he’s refused to negotiate with the unions, even though they’re willing to discuss pay cuts.

Employing another commonly used political tactic, you didn’t answer the the question asked of you.

Everybody plays the game, whether politics pays their bills or not. The Demos in Wisconsin lost their advntage in the election. Now they have to play buy the same rules they made their opponents play by in years past.

(Maybe Walker should have just told them that they needed to pass it without reading it and find out what was in it after it became law.)

“Moreoever, nestled in his budget proposal are spending increases that are designed to redistribute resources according to conservative ideological prescriptions.* Most remarkable is his request for $800 million (over two years) for “economic development incentives,” which almost certainly means a gubernatorially-controlled slush fund to be used to bribe companies to relocate to Florida through tax abatements, free government services, and other subsidies.”

Yeah, in a competitive marketplace for jobs as well as companies that are willing to hire people in your state giving state governments the means to entice those companies is a terrible idea. You’re right!

Refuse to compete for those jobs and, just like in Detroit, you should be able to buy back into the real estate market very cheaply in just a few years!

Yes, Wisconsin facing a $3.6 billion budget shortfall so why should he try to balance this? Union thugs say they want to “negotiate”. Right. Put a gun to the head of management and talk about how much more they will get…not less. That is a great “negotiation” ploy.

Let’s start over and put the teaching jobs on the block. Wisconsin teachers average $52,644 per year and get tenure in less than 5 years. They are being asked to contribute to their retirement (gads!), and pay 12% of their healthcare costs. Additionally, they get regular hours, 10 months of work time which is littered with days off. How outlandish! I am sure there are many employees in private business, not to mention those taxpayers who are unemployed and losing their houses to foreclosure, who would like to make the state an offer for a job like that.

Now their special interest, bought off, cronies haave abdicated their responsibilities and crossed the border. Isn’t that a fine demonstration and example of how democracy works for America to set to all these countries we are begging to seek freedom and a democratic process! They should just get a 2000+ page bill presented to them with less than 48 hours to read it then told to swallow it by the jack-booted leftists who run this country did in 2010. And we wonder why we are on the cliff’ss edge in the USA?

Idiots, total idiots. Sadly, we are no longer able to govern ourselves, and it didn’t just happen in the last two year. Selfish boomers are the one’s who have put us in this box, we sold our kids’ future out. Broke and corrupt, with a minimal chance to make it out without a class war bringing the empire down. Both sides have contributed mistakes all along but the driving force has been the revolutionaries all along who hate our capitalistic, free market system. Even FDR was smart enough to not want unions for federal workers. Once those goons get control, entitlement mentality takes over.

Agreed Mac. Only $52k/year with benefits? For shame! Forgive me for not being sympathetic to their plight, but their grievances ring hollow in the ears of victims of the recession who had to take whatever work we could get.

Be careful, the Senator will ban you if you contaminate his blog with facts- he’d rather make those up as he goes. He just called the Governor a lying sack of sh!t for saying that there was a budget deficit in Wisconsin- don’t contradict him with reality.

On the subject, Obama needs to keep his ignorant mouth shut on this matter- it is none of his concern, except that Wisconjsin will be calling for the Feds to bail them out if the Guv doesn’t straighten that crap out.

Fla, is it really necessary to think anybody who disagrees with you is a liar, or has unjust motives. Do you think political figures whom you agree with are free from the temptations and weaknesses of ordinary men? I have voted for Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Jim DeMint since turning 18, and I happen to think I care for my fellow man as much as the next guy. Your schtick here is as good as anybody’s, but try to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

C’mon, Mac. It’s about the exercise of power, not about left or right. There are thousands of police power abuse stories happening all over the country. Red state, blue state… it’s all the same on that.

Oh you are right Senator, there are abuses everywhere, and have been for decades as I stated above. It isn’t just a “left/right thang” any longer. But the pendulum has swung dramatically from right to left since the 50’s. I don’t really care what idealogy the person adheres to, I am fully prepared to defend what is left of America for the sake of my children. And yes, I do think it is coming to that….faster than many think. Not what I wanted, but I honestly do not see how we avoid a) financial collapse, and 2) class warfare as a result.

We are way beyond name calling at this point but defending any plan to maintain the staus quo is simply stupid and naive. What little chance we have will require strong medicine, and I don’t think we have the guts to take it. So yes, I will applaud those who are taking the tough stances and denounce those who feel we can just rock along with giving up the unfunded liabilities yet to come. Simple matter of demographics and math. Four and 1/2 billion per day just to service the debt. And every day the sun comes up……tick, tick, tick.

Senator, to your 2:45 reply: I don’t care which group brings solutions and remedies to the table but I suspect neither party is equipped to handle this. Any hope will come from the citizens themselves. Both parties are guilty, certainly one more than the other, but I have never been a “party” guy and feel what has happened to representation in this country is horrible. And make no mistake, there is a strong, leftist agenda to bring this country down. European leaders are waking up to what multi-culturalism, and abandoning your country’s own tradions will bring. They are speaking out bluntly. Sadly we are wading in deeper. Who would have thought France, Germany, and the UK’s leaders would recognize the danger of this radical move to the left while we have fools not only endorsing it but driving the bus closer to the cliff’s edge?

Straying from common sense is what got us here, and it is all that will get us back on track. Special interest programs must be set aside for the overall good; I just don’t see that happening at this stage. We have become a selfish, greedy, corrupt, and entitled society. The demonstrations and backlash against government cuts that we have seen in other countries is just a pre-cursor if what we will see here. Neither party seems to have the leadership to deal with this, but every day we wait puts us further in the hole, and adds more citizens who are dependent on government aid. Tick, tick, tick.

I am leftist. What’s on the agenda? I must have missed it. Fox News must have promulgated it when I was over at the ammo dump spit-shining my jackboots for the “Soon You Will All Be Leftists!” townhall meeting.

D in Fla, you have missed far, far more than just the “agenda” announcement. I avoid, and simply do not respond to your political comments because I find you a naive fool, and a political retard, so I will proudly say your labeling yourself a leftist is the only thing I have ever agreed with you on. The fact you even would admit something like that is very disturbing.

I am very much in the “love it or leave it” camp at this point so I can only hope I will soon see your handle change to “Dog in ———“, fill in any country who can appreciate your anti-American rant; there are several you can chant with. (Yes, unlike the libs who oppose all speech not supportive of the cause, I don’t deny you the right to express your weirdness, just find you pretty pathetic.) No more political responses from me to thee, carry on Comrade! Long live Brother Che! (oh, wait) You carry that banner proudly as many other leftist fools have done before you (but methinks you will not be so vocal when the sheet hits the fan.)

You wrote before many, many moons ago – heck, it may have even been a promise – that you weren’t going to respond to me. But I never made that promise to you.

“anti-American”? Absolute bullshit.

I didn’t want to be a pussy and join Alabama National Guard, much less Alabama Air National Guard, even if I ever had that opportunity (which I didn’t because daddy was labor not management), and got an all-minimum expense paid really, really long vacation to Vietnam. Wasn’t exactly Mr. Gung-Ho about it but who was. Orders are orders so what can you do.

When I feel like it, nobody can out-Redneck or out-Patriot me. Heck, I was even a KA.

Call me names. Tell me to leave the country. What a laugh. But don’t ever accuse me of being anti-American. Politically, you and I are far apart but unless you’re a Kenyan Muslim, you’re an American, too.

When you pitch people high and tight, you should expect to be pitched high and tight. Stop being such a name-caller about it.

By the way, the shit’s been hitting the fan big-time for a decade now. Started in 1980. No letup in sight. I’m not going anywhere. Doubt you are. We both have to deal with it. That’s what makes America great.

“You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love–they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Orson Welles in “The Third Man”

Today, I am so ***king proud to be a brownshirted jackbooted leftist taking what’s left of the United States of America away from my fellow countrymen, I don’t know who to thank.

First, of course, my agent Ali Akbar. And as alway, wingnuts, without whom I would have no motivation to do anything other than ***k around on a computer all day and last to the of the Teabagger Industrial Re-Education Camp – Poster Platoon for their always fine work

Don’t know if Leather Helmet’s report is true but a Auburn Professor said the tree is going to be fine. The poison has not affected the trees ability to perform photosynthesis so it will not die. Apparently the poison was the type that needed to be sprayed on the foliage but the nut just pored it on the ground.

“Spike® 80DF herbicide is a dry-flowable formulation which is mixed
and applied with a water carrier. A soil-active product, Spike 80DF is
applied to the soil surface by ground equipment and enters plants
only through the roots.”

This is Alabama we are talking about, not Wisconsin, Senator, this kind of irrational behavior IS part of the culture in Alabama. We may laugh at the Tech fans, but nobody in Alabama laughs at either set of fans….unless you are a fan of some school other than Alabama or Auburn, and in that case, nobody pays much attention to you anyway.

The poisoner may be a bit more irrational than even most fans of either Auburn or Bama, but he most definitely is a product of the football culture in the state.

Calling it the worst black eye in Alabama since the 60’s is not silly so much for overstating the severity of the crime in this case (and it certainly does that), but more because it downplays how sick, unjust, and corrupt Alabama’s culture has been long after George Wallace.

This is a state whose top institutions are still plagued with all kinds of corruption. A state whose flagship university’s president has no public response in the face of major, respected media outlets reporting blatant lies committed by his football coach. Lies and injustices committed most often against young adults from Alabama’s long and still heavily marginalized black communities.

Georgia’s history, like that of all states and peoples, is not clean. But the state and university, while still having much work to do, has moved into the 21st century. It is past Jan Kemp (and thanks to her for having forced it to get there). It is not oversigning and purging young black student-athletes by the boatloads. It is not immersed in the shady dealings of failed bankers, dog track owners, amateur athletes being shopped for cash,
and more signings and departures than any other college football program over the past 4 years.

Georgia is not Alabama (or Mississippi or Louisiana) anymore. Georgia has a first world, 21st century metropolis larger in population and GDP than those entire states. Georgia is much closer to a UVA, UNC, than an Alabama or Ole Miss. It’s time for Georgia fans to quit thinking of the SEC West schools as our friends and teammates. They are embarrassing albatrosses around the name and image of our university.

And despite all that, Texas, after reading some of the vituperative comments about our coaching staff here and other places, who is to say something equally egregious or worse, could not happen here, or anywhere else.

Pet Dye brings a unique perspective to the argument, having gone to Georgia (where he did pretty well as a student), coached at Bama and, of course, at Awbun. (pardon the pronounciational spelling, but that’s the way it would sound if’n Pet said it.

“A man who will do that will poison your dog, your cat and your children. People can spin this any way they want to, but this was a guy was off his medicine.” (HT, Chattanooga Times Free Press).

You really don’t think there is corruption in other states, like, say, Texas? Did you ever bother to read up on what Bill White (who just ran for governor) was doing while he was mayor of Houston?

And let’s not forget Atlanta. Plus, I’m sure that DiF would be happy to tell us about how all those d*#% republicans running Georgia are corrupt.

To say nothing of Illinois and Chicago…where our president cut his political teeth!!!

Point: it’s politics. Corruption is everywhere. Just like with the tree thing, everyone will point at the most recent example and cry about how terrible it is. Not too long ago this site was filled with posts about how terrible Florida and Urban Meyer were for Spikes/Rainey/and all the arrests. Remember Maurice Clarett and his antics in Columbus? Florida State was off the rails before that. Hey, go back farther and Miami was running a drug empire out of the dorms and Oklahoma was arming for a war. Today it happens to be Alabama. Who will it be tomorrow?

Heck, I don’t know much about Georgia politicians but am a little concerned with TD hammering the Heart of Dixie so much. I was raised in Baldwin County, attended Alabama and Auburn before Georgia. Never found an easy “A” anywhere. So whenever I read TD knocking the academics of the SEC West schools, it’s a bummer.

Yeah, I just reread his post and he seems to be overlooking quite abit of things in his own yard. Then again, perhaps he didn’t see the 30/30 on SMU that involved the Texas Governor. There’s also the Eric Dickerson affair…everything that goes on in Austin Williams/Benson/etc…Mike Leach and Bobby Knight in Lubbock…yadda, yadda, yadda.

That man had nothing to do with ‘Bama and I doubt that he ever darkened the door of any major university. We can’t point our finger at any state because of it’s idiot fringe. Every state has them. A few years ago some of my fellow Dawg fans and I went to a local watering hole to watch the Dawgs play the Vols. A very attractive young lady was there dressed in UT orange. Then these two “Dawg Fans” came in with a boom box and started playing UGA fight songs at full volume. You couldn’t even hear the game. Plus they were drunk and obnoxious and loud. Then they started ragging on the UT girl. One of my friends who happens to be a UGA grad had enough and yells at the two fans,”hey, why don’t you do us all a favor and shut the hell up! You never went to Georgia and you don’t know a damn thing about Georgia so shut up!” Well they picked up their boom box and left. The lady thanked us and said”don’t worry about it, we have them too.”

First of all, let me make it clear that I was just yanking your chain a little bit. It was a joke, hence he adorable little smiley face icon.

But if you want to get technical about it…quoth the Senator (less than two days ago):

“All I ask is that (1) people don’t engage in sockpuppetry; (2) people don’t spam comments they made at other blogs here; and (3) that commenters don’t bludgeon us with the same observation over and over again (particularly by hijacking comment threads). All that strikes me as more behavior than speech, which is where I draw the line.”

In that quote you clearly stated a disdain for highjacking threads, and you clearly indicated that you considered your short list of blog offenses to be behavioral phenomena, rather than speech phenomena.

Now…did I take conveniently connect a few dots in order to make your stance fit my witty little shot across the port side of your bow? Did I loosely interpret your definition of highjacking a thread to work in my even wittier Patty Hearst reference? I absolutely did in both cases. I sincerely hope you weren’t offended by any of that (not because I think my joke was out of line, but because I hope you aren’t that sensitive).

But having said all of that, are you sincerely going to act like you have absolutely no idea how I might have thought you ever made “a statement like that”? Please. You’re a lot smarter than that, and so am I. Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence. Deal?

I don’t want to get into a public pissing match with you and I know what icons are for… but you took a few liberties there.

I didn’t say that I object to threads being hijacked, or that such was behavior beyond the pale. What I did say was that repeating the same point over and over was objectionable. The hijacking comment was an aside, hence, as you like to say, the parenthesis.

I don’t have a problem with somebody vehemently disagreeing with my politics and I don’t care if a commenter calls me names. What I do care about, though, is what you did. You put words in my mouth in order to make me look like a hypocrite. Calling that a “loose interpretation” insults my intelligence.

Does that make me sensitive? Not in the sense that I’m going to do much of anything about it. But I’m not going to let it pass without a comment.

Oh holy crap…I’m not going to issue a thousand word defense of my original joke, nor am I going to issue a lengthy explanation of my subsequent comments. I realize that woould do no good because you have clearly taken my original joke as an assault on your integrity, and therefore you will not take any of my defenses or explanations at face value. That is regrettable. I can only assure you it wasn’t my intent and allow you to take that statement as you wish.

I certainly don’t require you to explain how egregiously I twisted the intent of your quote. I fully understood the meaning of your original words, and I freely admitted that I twisted them to fit into my joke – which was meant to be harmless. I wish you hadn’t taken it as anything else, and I regret that my original intent wasn’t clearer.

Senator, this old Dawg & UGA Grad will not get into the WI. discussion. However I will state my opinion which seems to be the same as all of the other people, mostly old, that I have talked to.
I fully support the Gov. & what he is trying to do & have no respect for the Union(s). I disagree with you completely & whole heartily on this issue. That does it for me on that subject. No Reply.

And now I see why I don’t allow politics on my blog. Good God. Politics aren’t always black and white, people. Actually, I’d say they’re generally black and black. Did you guys flaming the Senator ever stop to think that maybe this issue in WI isn’t an us-or-them issue? Maybe the WI unions need to be reined in, but maybe their corporate-welfare promoting, corrupt governor isn’t the one to do it.

I’ll throw one more thing out there. The culture is definitely part of the problem in Alabama. I grew up in the state, and let me tell you, these people hate each other, and not in the way that UGA hates Tech or USC hates Clemson. Auburn and Alabama fans really wish ill upon each other. In a way, the saddest part of this incident is that (1) it’s not as surprising as it should be and (2) it’s only another in a long history of bizarre occurrences between the fans of these two schools.